Interstellar Plasma Turbulence Spectrum Toward the Pulsars PSR B0809+74 and B0950+08

Abstract

Interstellar scintillations of pulsars PSR B0809+74 and B0950+08 have been studied using observations at low frequencies (41, 62, 89, and 112 MHz). Characteristic temporal and frequency scales of diffractive scintillations at these frequencies have been determined. The comprehensive analysis of the frequency and temporal structure functions reduced to the same frequency has shown that the spectrum of interstellar plasma inhomogeneities toward both pulsars is described by a power law. The exponent of the spectrum of fluctuations of interstellar plasma inhomogeneities toward PSR B0950+08 (n = 3.00 +- 0.05) appreciably differs from the Kolmogorov exponent. Toward PSR B0809+74 the spectrum is a power law with an exponent n = 3.7 +- 0.1. A strong angular refraction has been detected toward PSR B0950+08. The distribution of inhomogeneities along the line of sight has been analyzed; it has been shown that the scintillations of PSR B0950+08 take place on a turbulent layer with enhanced electron density, which is localized at approximately 10 pc from the observer. For PSR B0809+74 the distribution of inhomogeneities is quasi-uniform. Mean-square fluctuations of electron density on inhomogeneities with a characteristic scale rho_0 = 10^7 m toward four pulsars have been estimated. On this scale the local turbulence level in the 10-pc layer is 20 times higher than in an extended region responsible for the scintillations of PSR B0809+74.

13 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Evidence for alignment of the rotation and velocity vectors in pulsars
• Interstellar Scintillation of the Polarized Flux Density in Quasar, PKS 0405-385
• Decapitating the Duck: The (non)association of PSR B1757-24 and supernova remnant G5.4-1.2
• Interstellar Scintillation of PSR J0437-4715
• Properties of the linearly polarized radiation from PSR B0950+08
• PSR B0809+74: Understanding Its Perplexing Subpulse-separation (P2) Variations

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Scattering analysis of LOFAR pulsar observations
• Pulsar scintillation studies with LOFAR. I. The census
• Dual-frequency single-pulse study of PSR B0950+08
• Revealing compact structures of interstellar plasma in the Galaxy with RadioAstron
• Scintillation Bandwidth Measurements from 23 Pulsars from the AO327 Survey
• Revisiting the structure function of PSR B0950+08 scintillations
• Variations in the Radiation Intensity of Pulsar B0950+08: Nine Years of Monitoring at 110 MHz